Product details
- ISBN 9781918191301
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 04 Jun 2026
- Publisher: Whitefox Publishing Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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From rock’n’roll roadie to conveyor belt sushi empire – the unlikely story of the man who built YO!
In 1997, Simon Woodroffe opened YO! Sushi with £200,000 and a 100-metre conveyor belt. For two weeks, nobody came. By week three, there was a queue around the block that lasted three years.
But Simon’s journey to that moment was anything but conventional. A former roadie and stage designer who worked on Live Aid and built sets for rock legends, he’d been expelled from school, arrested for drugs at nineteen, and served time in a young offender’s prison. By his early forties, after business failures and divorce, he was nearly broke and wondering if he’d ever amount to anything.
Then came fire-walking. Lunch with a Japanese businessman. A crazy idea. And the decision to risk everything at forty-five.
This is the brutally honest, wildly entertaining story of how Simon created not just one but multiple iconic brands: YO! Sushi, YOTEL and the YO! empire itself. From the Creative Britannia moment of the late 90s to bankruptcy scares, difficult partnerships and becoming an original Dragon on BBC’s Dragon’s Den, Simon holds nothing back about the sleepless nights, mental health struggles, relationship disasters and moments of pure terror when everything hung by a thread.
Whether you’re forty-five and wondering if it’s too late, or nineteen and wondering if it’s possible, YO! MAN proves that the most unlikely journeys often lead to the most extraordinary destinations.
Simon Woodroffe OBE is a British entrepreneur best known for founding YO! Sushi in 1997 and YOTEL in 2006, and for being one of the original Dragons on the BBC’s Dragons’ Den. After leaving boarding school at 16 and serving time in prison at 19, he spent two decades in the music business, designing stages for major rock acts and working on Live Aid in 1985. At 45, after business failures and divorce, he opened YO! Sushi with £200,000 and created one of Britain’s most iconic restaurant brands. He went on to build YOTEL into a global hotel chain with properties from Singapore to New York. Appointed OBE in 2006 for services to hospitality, Simon has spent the past two decades speaking internationally about entrepreneurship, innovation and reinvention. He divides his time between London and Thailand, where he continues to develop new concepts under the YO! brand.
